People Advisor in Manchester

Ideally, you’ll be based in our Manchester office, as you’ll be supporting our North region, working with teams in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle. You’ll regularly travel between these offices, with occasional visits to other Ridge offices as needed.

Our People Advisors sit at the heart of our People Advisory team, acting as skilled and trusted advisors and enablers to our managers, and ensuring that every decision and action taken is aligned to our people strategy and enhances the experience our people have working at Ridge. This is a varied and generalist role, providing day-to-day support on all people related matters across the whole employee lifecycle. As well as coaching and supporting our managers and advising our people, you’ll be responsible for the continuous improvement of our processes as we continue to grow our business and evolve our people policies, producing and interpreting key people data, supporting change and transformation activity and our performance development cycle.

You’ll work closely with your People Partner and our People Coordinators, on a full range of initiatives, projects and people related activity. Working in a fast-paced environment, you will need to be hands‑on, able to take ownership and work collaboratively to deliver, as well as being comfortable working with uncertainty and ambiguity.

What you need to do to be effective in this role:

• Advise, support and coach managers to successfully manage employee relations matters. Ensure cases are managed effectively and constructively, and with sensitivity to the employee experience.
• As appropriate, manage investigations and support managers with individual cases relating to performance, disciplinary and grievance in a timely manner, with clarity and by taking a constructive approach.
• Support managers with absence cases, including providing advice and guidance relating to wellbeing, rehabilitation and occupational health.
• Provide advice and guidance to managers on policies, procedures, and employment matters, taking time to identify and elevate any opportunities or risks, to ensure continuous improvement.
• Act as a first line of support for our people, providing advice and guidance relating to all people matters across the employee lifecycle with a focus on providing exceptional customer service.
• Coach managers on how to facilitate performance development reviews, set goals and measure results and how to have regular and meaningful career conversations.
• Set a great personal example for our People Coordinators; encourage, coach and enable them to do their best work and help them to grow and develop.
• Support the delivery of all people activities across the employee life cycle, including key people practices such as workforce planning, reward and recognition (including payroll and salary and bonus review), career progression, leavers, employee engagement activity etc.
• Act as a skilled end user of our core People software system, ensuring accurate and timely data input.
• Produce management information reports as required and use data, together with your initiative, and judgement to spot trends and identify continuous improvement opportunities.
• Support the People team in successfully delivering and embedding ad hoc projects, including change and transformation activity.
• Work collaboratively with the wider People team, sharing knowledge and supporting others, to provide effective and efficient support to the business.
• Keep up-to-date with new employment and employee related legislation.

The skills and experience you need to have for this role:

• A real interest in what we do.
• Previous experience of providing effective generalist HR advice and guidance within a fast‑paced environment.
• A working knowledge of transactional HR processes and related legislation and an understanding of how they underpin the entire employee lifecycle.
• Experience of dealing with complex employee relations cases, such as disciplinaries, grievances, appeals, absence management etc.
• Coaching and influencing skills with an ability to challenge as required (in a positive way!).
• A customer service focus, in terms of delivering a high‑quality people service.
• Proficiency in using an HRIS system.
• Experience of using data to spot trends and areas for improvement.
• Perseverance and resilience - particularly when it would be easier to give up.
• A real team player, willing to work collaboratively to get the job done.
• Excellent relationship building and communication skills, with the ability to move between listening to, guiding and coaching others at all levels.
• Common sense - creatively solving problems and spotting opportunities to simplify and improve processes to drive better results.